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Intoxicate the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18051 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Four—Schisms

            “I need to talk to you, Potter.”

            Harry glanced up from his book with a surprised little blink. Catchers stood in the doorway of his room, and Harry didn’t remember inviting him in, past the protective spells that he’d strengthened since the incident with the shadow hounds.

            Then he remembered, and grimaced a bit. Oh, yes. We discussed the prisoners for most of last night, and I never got around to putting the protective spells back up.

            “Come in,” he said, and scooted his chair back from the table as if that would make him look more welcoming. They both knew that it didn’t really work, and Harry wondered, as Catchers came into the room, whether that pretense of friendliness had annoyed him more than it helped.

            “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Catchers told him, not even bothering to shut the door. Harry reached out and did it with a little flick of his wand. Catchers tensed, his eyes flickering back and forth between the table and the closed door, and Harry sighed. No matter what he did, he thought, the man would distrust him. It was better to at least keep the conversation private.

            “In regards to the rebellion?” Harry asked. “I know that I haven’t paid as much attention to it as I should have because of the unrealistic way that I was thinking. I was hoping that you might agree to help me recover from that mistake.”

            Catchers gave a funny little laugh and held his hands together as if he were clutching a rope that stretched in front of him. “Not that,” he said. “This has gone beyond that, and become something else.”

            “Well, what, then?” Harry had had quite enough of cryptic riddles and mysterious clues back when he was fighting Voldemort. He still loved Dumbledore, but when he thought about him, he sometimes wanted to slap the man for relying on mysterious hints for as much as he had. “The rebellion is the only thing you and I have in common.”

            “You raided Azkaban,” Catchers said, and then paused and stood there, staring at him.

            Harry laughed, because he couldn’t help himself. “I had noticed, yes,” he added, when Catchers continued to stare at him.

            “You raided it with dragons,” Catchers whispered. “And you insisted that we take out all the prisoners as well as the guards before you’d do it.”

            “Are you suggesting that I should have burned them to death?” Harry flicked his wand again, and the door opened behind Catchers, who jumped like a cat seeing a full bathtub. “If you really mean that seriously, then I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other.”

            “I mean,” Catchers said, as if the words had broken past some barrier in himself, and he was now speaking fast and aggressively, glaring at Harry as if this was his fault, “that you were an Auror. Like me. Sworn to uphold justice. Like me. I thought you were serving the cause of justice when you burned Minister Duplais and then went on the run. And it turns out that you have no idea what you’re doing, that you’re going to let all the criminals go even if they’re guilty, that you have no grand plan.”

            “I never had one of those,” Harry said. “You can ask the people who knew me in school. What matters is that I wanted to stop the Ministry from arresting Muggleborns just because they were accused by pure-bloods and letting pure-bloods go because they had enough money to pay for mercy. That’s all.”

            “But you let them all out,” Catchers whispered. “The guilty as well as the innocent. I don’t understand.”

            “Do you think they should have stayed there?” Harry asked, a trifle impatiently, because once again this was starting to sound mysterious to him. “Any conviction made under the current Wizengamot, or at least under Minister Duplais, is suspect. Do you think that we were supposed to leave the pure-bloods there and only take the Muggleborns? What?”

            Catchers shook his head. “You have no idea what I want.”

            “No, I don’t,” Harry said sharply. “And that’s the problem.” He gestured to the open door. “Feel free to leave if you don’t want to talk to me.”

            “I would, if there weren’t more people depending on me.” Catchers’s eyes flashed at him. “But I promised them, I promised them, that I would stand up to you.” He braced himself as though against an invisible wind and held up his head. “The problem is that you’re appointing yourself judge and jury. You’re acting like Minister Duplais, as if you have the right to judge them.”

            “Other people are going to help,” Harry said slowly, wondering if Catchers had missed that. “They’re going to make sure that we go over the cases slowly, and we can try to make sure that we get the right records from the Ministry, if we can have people there steal them for us. Some of the families of the people who have joined the rebellion or who’ve stayed out of it so far might do that, because it would mean their relatives going free.”

            “You’re taking on a role that only the Ministry can take on,” Catchers said hoarsely. “It’s one thing to change things, but I always assumed that we would go back to the Ministry in the end, that this was only temporary.”

            “Is that what you thought?” Harry couldn’t help the way his voice gentled, the way his eyes met Catchers’s as he thought of the disappointment he’d seen on the other man’s face often in the past few days. “No. Things can’t ever be the same. The Ministry would have to change some laws anyway, but I can’t go back. I don’t think they would have me as an Auror. No one would ever trust me again.”

            “Then leave a way open for the rest of us,” Catchers said. “A place. You must be able to do that, as powerful as you are, unless you intend to bring the Ministry down completely.”

            Harry shook his head. “I don’t understand you. At one point you accuse me of wanting too much power, at another point you say that I have to have the power to convince the Minister and her cronies to take you back. Make up your mind.”

            “You were supposed to be the hero,” Catchers said, his cheeks flushing, and his breath coming faster, and if the barriers had been shattered before, Harry suspected they were coming down in flaming pieces now. “The one who made his decisions for noble reasons, who never let personal interest get in the way. But now, now, I learn that you decided to raid Azkaban because one man begged you to. A man you want to fuck.”

            “Oh, you mean Draco,” Harry said. He thought about it, and then added, “Not that I really want to fuck him, but he’s the only one you could mean. And I didn’t do it because he asked me. We had that plan ready long before. George is good, but not even he can manufacture something like that wheel in two days.”

            “But the tipping point was when Malfoy asked you,” Catchers said, and studied him with a look of loathing so wide and bright that it finally told Harry what he was dealing with here: a twisted crush, a bad case of hero-worship. “You wouldn’t have done it just then if not for him. He can compel you to do things.”

            “If words were that powerful,” Harry said gently, “you would have made a difference in the way I go about things just by talking to me. And no, I didn’t do it because he asked. I was happy to know that he’d be able to free his parents that way, yes. That’s not the same thing.”

            Catchers shook his head, but Harry overrode him, confident he could prove his point. “Now that Draco’s parents are free, he’ll spend his time with them, helping them, instead of dancing attendance on me. If I wanted his attention, or his loyalty, then helping him free them wasn’t a smart move, was it?”

            “He’ll owe you a debt,” Catchers muttered, but he sounded doubtful for the first time.

            Harry shook his head and smiled at him. “Draco’s above that. And above sleeping with me for any other reason than because he wants to.”

*

            Would I? How well you don’t know me, Potter.

            Draco stood outside Potter’s door, his hand half-raised to knock. Then he had realized the door was ajar, instead of fully closed—something that tended to happen with the half-arsed versions of spells that some people used when they were distracted. It was the most natural thing in the world to lean on the wall, fold his arms in case someone came along and he needed a mask of boredom for them, and listen.

            Catchers’s words were amusing, and depressing. Draco had been sure that Potter would lose control of the revolution sooner or later, and from his responses, he didn’t realize that he was in danger of doing exactly that.

            Potter doesn’t see power dynamics. He wants to deal with people as individuals only, not what they represent. Draco shook his head. I don’t know if anyone could have saved him from crashing into this problem.

            The sharp tone of Catchers’s responses told Draco something else, though. Potter might not realize it, might think that it was only a case of Catchers being disappointed that a cause he’d risked his life and career for wasn’t worthy, but in reality, he wanted to fuck Potter as badly as Potter probably wanted to fuck Draco.

            Draco stood there and felt a distant stretch of feeling, a prickling, tingling sensation, as though muscles he’d had asleep for years were waking up and stretching again. He chuckled to himself and shook his head.

            The last emotion he would have expected to feel on hearing this conversation was jealousy. Or interest, for that matter. Potter was right. For seven years, he had dreamed of his parents being free, and the way that he would wrap himself up in them and be consumed, because that was what he wanted, all he wanted.

            Of course, that was when he had thought his father would understand that years had passed outside the prison, instead of declaring that Draco was no fit son of his because he hadn’t done everything perfectly. Draco could understand power dynamics, but that meant little without the power to manipulate them.

            If Potter and I were true allies, with his strength and my insight, then…

            But Draco let the dream drift away. He doubted that his dreams of revenge against the Ministry would intrigue Potter.

            “You speak to him,” Catchers was saying, voice rusty. “Talk to him, and he’ll tell you that he wants to sleep with you.”

            “He might say that if there was some advantage to be found in it,” Potter said peacefully. “But I told you. Now that he has his parents back, I highly doubt that he’ll think of me again.” His voice was flat on the last words, and Draco couldn’t tell if regret was among the emotions that Potter was crushing down.

            “You’re impossible,” Catchers said, soft as a prayer. “Why did I ever think that I could trust you? That you could lead us to victory?”

            “I don’t know,” Potter said. “I suspect that everyone has a different reason for being here. I thought I knew what yours was, but you’ve told me I don’t.” There was a little light regret in his voice now, as though he was wondering about the person Catchers might have been. Your lover, if you would let him, Draco answered in his head. “Go away, if that’s what you want. Some of the others might go with you.”

            “You think that you can fight the revolution all by yourself?” There was an unattractive sound that was probably Catchers scoffing, or perhaps spitting. Draco hoped not. Potter would probably let the spittle sit in the middle of the floor, becoming a huge, stagnant pool that would attract mosquitoes and other nuisances. “Without our strength behind you, who would support you and tend your precious prisoners and help you judge them?”

            “I would do it myself, if I had to,” Potter said. “But I know that others will stay. Ron. George. Draco, if only for his parents.”

            “A slender support system,” Catchers sneered.

            “But mine.”

            Draco wished he dared to lean forwards and look around the door, but from what he had seen before, Potter’s table faced it and so Potter would probably spot him. He could envision the scene, though: Catchers staring at Potter in dawning rage, Potter looked back with faint impatience, his fingers laced together in front of him.

            Catchers didn’t understand, no more than Draco had at first. He had changed Potter’s attitude about being the only one to take risks—Potter had stayed behind on the dragons without protest, after all, instead of insisting that he go first in the charge to rescue the prisoners—but Potter would still struggle on no matter how many or how few were left with him. That was the driving determination that men like Catchers were attracted to because they thought they could tame it. They would become more and more disappointed as the years passed and it always flamed ahead of them, never caught, never bridled.

            Potter’s revolution might fail. But he wouldn’t give in to political demands that people made like threats. Draco now thought that Potter valued him so much because he had spoken Potter’s own language, without realizing it: courage and respect.

            And the saving of lives. I wonder if he would love his Weasley friends as much if they had stayed safely behind the lines instead of helping him during the war.

            “You don’t know what you’ve done,” Catchers said, apparently deciding the time had come to return to vague generalities. “There are plenty of others who would follow me, and betray you to the Ministry.”

            “Oh,” Potter said quietly, even as Draco flinched in sheer reaction and backed away from the slightly open door.



            Catchers uttered a low moan. Draco hadn’t heard any sound from within the room, no incantation from Potter or signs that he had pulled his wand, but he could smell the stink of wild magic, thick and free, with salt like the ocean in it. He pictured Catchers pinned against the wall, or with his fingers suddenly severed, or his foot burned off. Potter might have done any and all of those in his drive to protect those loyal to him.

            “Not fighting for me is one thing,” Potter said, and it was terrifying how calm his voice was. “I can respect that, and I can’t force you to go against your principles without becoming what I’m trying to fight. But if you hurt anyone else, if you tell the Ministry about this manor or about Draco or about our secrets, then I will do this to you again. Do you like the pain? Do you understand it? Because you’ll suffer it, without being allowed to die. My magic won’t let you, even if I am gone.”

            Catchers gasped several times, and somewhere in there must have been an affirmation Draco didn’t hear, because Potter snorted, and there was the sound of a limp body hitting the floor. “Good. Then get out of here.”

            Draco cast a Disillusionment Charm over himself, but he doubted that Catchers would have noticed him if he hadn’t done it. The man walked past with his lips bloodied and his face utterly white. He tried to turn around for one defiant glare as he reached the corner, but he couldn’t manage it. He bowed his head and fled.

            “Ah, Draco. There you are. How much did you overhear?”

            Potter was standing in his doorway, looking the same as he always did—vague eyes with a fire behind them, a handsome face carved with lines of weariness, his body loose and buzzing with the resonance of his magic. But his eyes were focused on Draco even beneath the Disillusionment Charm. Draco hadn’t had a chance to get used to that before Potter abruptly gestured at him and shook his head.

            “My magic tells me that you’re there, as usual,” he said. “You don’t have to worry that you’d suddenly be visible to anyone else. Like Catchers,” he added, with a faint smile that Draco could imagine easily becoming piercing.

            Draco nodded and dismissed the spell, since it wasn’t doing him any good. “Do you have a few moments to speak?” he asked.

            “Is it about your parents?” Potter tilted his head as though examining the wall above Draco, where an invisible calendar might hang, for all he knew. Then he nodded. “All right, but if you’re going to ask me to trust them with wands, then I’m afraid I’ll just have to say no and send you on your way.”

            “Afraid?” Draco asked, following Potter into his room and making sure to close the door firmly behind them so that someone else couldn’t eavesdrop the way he had done. Potter whirled around when he heard the click, and his gaze was so intense that Draco had to turn his head to the side. But he made sure to keep his general perceptions focused on Potter, so that he would know where he was at all times.

            “Afraid, because I wouldn’t like to deny you much,” Potter said.

            And there it was, the thrumming tension between them that Draco had half come to encourage and half feared. He licked his lips and asked, “Does your magic tell you things about other people the way it does me?”

            “Not much,” Potter said. “You’re the only common one.”

            Draco half-closed his eyes. He needed to know the limit of this power as soon as possible, because when his father found out about it, Lucius would urge him to use it. Draco needed to be able to tell him no if necessary. “I—I don’t know what you feel about me, Potter,” he said. “You escorted me to the prison so that I could free my parents, but they weren’t the only ones you freed. I saved your life, but I’m not the only one who’s done that, either, in the past.”

            He sensed that Potter was smiling, and once again he couldn’t look at him directly. “That’s true,” Potter said. “But you’re different from Ron and my other friends.”

            “How’s that?” Draco’s voice shook. He ground his teeth and faced Potter, determined that no matter what happened, his father wouldn’t be able to condemn him as a coward and be right about it.

            Potter watched him with those shining eyes that Draco found fascinating and frightening at the same time. “I want you more,” he said simply, as if such declarations were made between former enemies every day.

            Draco hesitated. Here was where he had wanted to be when he came to the rebellion: in a position of power and influence over Potter. And he hadn’t had to work to seduce him, either; Potter had decided that he wanted Draco without “help” from anything but life-saving. Draco hadn’t had to employ lingering looks and touches, sighs, or rumors.

            That made him distrust what was happening.

            “Why?” he asked.

            “Because you’re undivided,” Potter said.

            Draco blinked. That couldn’t mean what it sounded like, when he was split in his loyalty to Potter over his parents, and Potter would be wise enough to know that if not how deep the division went.

            “You have a goal,” Potter said, “and you stick to it. You wanted your parents out of Azkaban. You tried again and again throughout the seven years since the war to gain access to them, didn’t you? Some of the people who joined us were clerks in the Ministry who processed your applications for visits. They remember. And since you joined the rebellion, you’ve tried to keep me alive, even though you don’t like me much personally, because you knew that I might be able to help you.” Potter laughed softly. “Then you would have Apparated back if you could, because you were afraid of what might happen to your parents on the backs of the dragons, or that they wouldn’t like the ride. Draco, you’re loyal. You’re steadfast. If you doubt me, it’s not because I’m failing to live up to some standard of perfection that you want to see me fulfill. It’s purely and simply because I’m getting in the way of your goal.”

            Draco wanted to laugh hysterically, but his dry throat prevented him. If he only knew the doubts I’m having now about my father and my relationship with him, he wouldn’t say that.

            On the other hand, Draco wasn’t so great a fool as to confess that. He did make a half-hearted protest, his mind on Weasley. “Surely your closest friends don’t expect you to be a hero in the way that Catchers does.”

            “No, but they expect me to be their friend,” Potter said quietly. “The same irresponsible, reckless boy I was in school, always coming out of it in the end by some brilliant but impossible twist of luck. I can’t do that anymore. I have more power than I did then, and I have more responsibility. Ron is worried about me. I’m glad that he is. But he doesn’t know what to do with me. You do.” He smiled at Draco. “Shift me out of the way if I don’t help you reach your goal, use me if I do.”

            “That is such a strange reason to want someone,” Draco couldn’t help saying.

            “I know,” Potter said, still as quietly as though he was expecting someone to break in on them. “But it’s the way I feel. And it’s not as though I expect you to want me back,” he added, his voice suddenly younger again and more like the Potter that Draco had thought he knew. “I mean—I know that it’s not—you probably can’t want me anyway, since you’re so focused on your parents. That’s what I admire about you. But there it is.” He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. “What you ask of me, I’ll do, within reason. I can give your parents different quarters and stronger protection spells. I’ve already had to strengthen a few on the other rooms. Some of the rebels who feel the same way that Catchers does were going to sneak in and hurt them.”

            Draco clenched his fists in front of him. Intolerable, to think of that happening, when he had faced down and fought so many dangers, including ones inside his own skull, to get his parents back.

            Of course, who could say that he would keep them?

            “I’d like—the stronger protective spells.” He moved forwards, unsure where he was stepping, aware only that his heart was beating so hard that it made his steps shake. “And I’d like something else.”

            “Yes?” Potter cocked his head, apparently unaware of what Draco wanted, though for most other people Draco’s closeness and the way he was moving would be clues in and of themselves.

            When Draco kissed him, his mouth was warm and dry, then wet a moment later as it fell open in wonder. Draco raised a hand to clutch at the back of Potter’s neck, and only then did Potter respond, with a strength that made Draco feel as if he was dying.

            They kissed for several moments, until Draco had had enough for now and stepped away. His heart was beating hard enough to hurt, his breath coming shallowly. He didn’t know yet what he would do with this new connection to Potter. But he had seized the chance to strengthen it while he had it, and that couldn’t be a bad thing.

            Potter shook his head, seemingly feeling as dazed as Draco did. Then he smiled helplessly at him.

            And in that smile, Draco could see the seeds of why this might not be such a good idea, after all.

*

            SP777: Draco didn't know he would have to stand up to his father at first, which is what made him slow to react.

            Well, you'll just have to wait and see on the things that Fred and George are seeing.

            "Dross and slag" come mostly from the state of Azkaban's walls and the way that Lucius thinks of Draco in that chapter.
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Intoxicate the Sun